China in Africa: The Real Story

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November 19, 2014

Does Chinese aid mainly go to African presidents' villages?

A new paper released by the folks at AidData argues that Chinese aid goes disproportionately to the birthplace regions of African leaders. Media comment is building up on this paper, and an article in The Guardian seems to be leading the way. I am actually somewhat sympathetic to the argument of the paper. My own anecdotal observations suggest that at least one of the 3 primary schools financed in many African countries by the Chinese (following a 2006 FOCAC pledge to build 100 primary schools across Africa) has often been located in an African president's hometown. However, the vast majority of Chinese official aid projects are financed in capital cities -- something the researchers neglected to discuss.

May 2, 2013

AidData: Why it is not Wikipedia

The debate about AidData's crowd-sourcing methodology is heating up (see comments on my post from April 30). A recent note on Development Gateway in support of AidData compared AidData's methodology to Wikipedia, saying that this kind of crowd-sourcing of information can be productive.

April 30, 2013

Rubbery Numbers for Chinese Aid to Africa

Today, a new paper and media-based dataset on Chinese aid/finance was released by the AidData project, in an event at the Center for Global Development. AidData collected these numbers over the past 18 months, from media reports. According to AidData, the Chinese have committed $75 billion in official development finance to Africa, 2000 to 2011.